Two birds with one stone
by witchfingers
Summary: Stealing medicine, running away from Mukuro... stuff happens when you live in the suburbs. And who said anything about Cuba? Modern day AU with a twist, FuuGen!
1. On the street

_Present- day AU. Takes place in the suburbs of some large American city._

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two birds with one stone

He'd come under fire, which meant that if he didn't hide, those bastards would try to make him foot that damn bill that wasn't even his. He'd be counting the cost of his little recklessness for a while now, and he could picture his near future clearly, and didn't like a bit of it.

On the other hand_, _maybe it wasn't that much of a bad idea to keep a low profile for some weeks. It was long since he'd broken the bank, and though he'd managed to _come by_ cash in varied ways, maybe it was just better to chill down and go back to the drawing board. Oh wait, whichever drawing board he meant? As if he ever planned anything…

As he prowled down the street, just trying to be like a drop in the ocean among all the people coming or going, some sort of ruckus in the entrance of an alleyway caught his attention. It was stronger than him, whichever thing that didn't toe the line was a magnet to his malice, whichever wrongdoer he came across was an instant ally. He was just like that.

As he squinted his eyes to see better as he drew closer, a situation became apparent. There were two of them, those monkeys-in-blue the decent people called policemen, trying to wrestle this worrisomely thin kid to the ground. It was amazing, though, the franctic way in which the fragile-looking hooded guy struggled to break free from them- two big, bulky cops, twice his size. He just didn't seem to grow tired of kicking and fistfighting empty spaces. Wouldn't seem to give in to his plans of escaping going up in smoke.

Mugen was not the good guy of the story, but he didn't just pay lip-service to his convictions either, and so, sure of being taking a step in the right direction, he came up to the cops.

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**A/N: Hey! I'm reposting this story because internet is a bitch and messed everything up. Hope you enjoy it! Reviews/ comments are greatly appreciated!**


	2. In the alleyway

**2 - In the alleyway**

His coming into scene was for Fuu like a breath of fresh air. Regardless of who this mister rash was, he'd distracted those cops enough for her to be able to scoop up the bundle she'd dropped to the ground, and steal into a shadow of the alleyway. From her newly acquired bystander status, she looked on.

The guy's interruption had put the cops on the spot. He was a disheveled sort of attractive man, with a slight stubble on his chin and weatherworn clothes (and sneakers). His hair appeared to her as rather comical, too. Apparently he was asking them something, and they looked outraged, as if he'd brought to light how they'd been abusing her. Though she found it vaguely odd that he kept talking to them about her as if she were a "kid". Ugh, and she unconsciously rubbed a bump she'd gotten in her little ghost-of-a-scuffle.

What happened then was very sudden- they launched at him, both of them at the same time, and something odd he must have done, because two seconds later there they were, all sprawled out on the dusty ground, and he was calling her,

"C'me on kid, let's get the hell outta here,"

and then it was as clear as a bell that that was her cue to escape.

The people in the street didn't have time to get surprised, they two sprinted past the crowds and in no time they were blocks away from the incident, she was panting and he was smirking smugly.

"So, seems you got lucky today, kid," her unorthodox saviour commented smugly.

"Y-yeah," she said, still half-out of breath. "Thank you, really," and when she stood up fully and her hood accidentally dropped, it must have come as a rude awakening for mr. saviour, because his expression changed completely, and he looked perplexed, if anything.

"Weren't you a boy two secs ago?"

She didn't find it funny, but couldn't just go snapping at her rescuer. She puffed her cheeks and shook her head.

"Well, whatever kiddo," he said, and was about to walk away with his pride unmaimed, when shouting reached their ears, and it became obvious that they were looking for them.

Just then, Mugen noticed that this girl was clutching a package as though it were made of pure gold.

"What's that?" he asked, coming up to her to get a clear look at it. She backed off slightly, the calls and shouting coming closer to them each minute. Without waiting for her reply, he grabbed her wrist out of instinct and began running down a side-street, then turned at an alleyway, and suddenly Fuu found herself being shoved into a random house, the guy getting in right after her and closing the door after them. It was pitch black in there, she supressed a shiver.

"What's this place?", her voice a whisper.

He must've shrugged. "Dunno," he replied flatly, "Now, weren't ya about to tell me about…"

"Ugh," she fidgeted, apparently he wouldn't let her bury her head in the sand… "It's just some medicine…"

"Ah? Medicine?" he sounded so disappointed she almost felt pity for him. "Yes… my mother is very ill you see… and our home was burnt to a crisp so we've nothing left… and she needs it."

He hmmed. "Right, it must be kinda expensive medicine," and now he sounded ironic or sarcastic or something like that.

Everything was still, as if nothing was going on in the world out there- Mugen drew a lighter from his pocket and lit the place. It was some old cellar-like room, uninteresting and filthy.

He dropped down to the floor, making his back comfortable against the wall. Seeing her purse her nose, he dedicated her a smirk. "You find a spot girly, we can't go out till it's dark out ya see."

She bit back a sigh. Right, being at loggerheads with the police wasn't just a warrant for comfort or something…

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**A/N: chapter two! cheers!**


	3. In a cellarlike room

**3 - In a cellarlike room**

As she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, she guessed she was sort of in need for a rotten apple. He was scratching the back of his head of jungle-like hair, trudging behind her. She wondered what could've been his reason for stepping into her fight, saving her, and not only that, but scolting her afterwards, also. Most especially since at the moment he'd thought she was a boy (thought at which she shuddered)

Mugen distantly noticed her peeking at him, but paid her no heed. He also neglected a passing thought which scornfully hinted at his having acted as the good guy of the story for the first time in _years_. His mind was far away from there, going over the events of a couple of days ago, when he'd come to know finally about the inside job woven around him. Of course one could never expect much from the scum with which he associated… anyway, when the time came to spill the beans, they had sheepishly pointed the finger at him- and he, who always worked alone, regretted to the very core of his soul having accepted that dumb offer to pilot their god-forsaken ship- no matter how good the pay might have been. He told himself mentally for the umpteenth time that he should've known that ganging up with Mukuro meant _always_ putting a foot wrong. Well, when he accepted he'd been way drunk. But still, who did he think he was, Jesus Christ or something? A fucking chrusader? He could just damn forsake a promise whenever it occurred him…

Fuu stopped at a crossroads, looked up at the road sign, and then turned left. The neighbourhood was quiet, and simple little houses lined at both sides of the broad pavement. It made a nice picture, with the bluish darkness enveloping every crevice that the yellow bulbs of the streetlights did not set aflame. The night air sweetly smelled like recently mowed grass too, and Mugen hadn't smelled such a thing in so many summers, that he barely recognised the scent at first.

"So tell, why've you followed me this far?" she asked, and the perfect stillness shattered to the ground in a manner not entirely unpleasant.

He looked up at the starless sky.

"I'm covering my tracks babe," he explained in a bittersweetly amused voice, "This way I'm comin' to places I'd not be in any other case."

She understood him halfway, but dwelled not too much in it. It just dawned on her that he had this subtle Spanish accent, which maybe could explain his tanned skin and masculine sharpnesses. Whatever.

"Oh, come clean will you?" she told him after a while, turning round to look into his wolfish grey eyes.

"I'm not kidding girly," he said darkly, "See these tattoos?," and he rapidly wove a wrist before her eyes (she noticed his other wrist and ankles were tattooed as well, two blue stripes around each), "It's the kind of thing you do when you're doing time, when you're bored outta your soul and all you can get your hands on, is a fucking pen."

She blinked and, wordlessly, spun round again and kept walking. Her mind tried to tell her she could be seriously getting herself in hot water, but she'd have none of that.

He knew there was not a whisp of money on her, and if it wasn't money that he wanted, he wouldn't have waited that long to assault her. She knew, on the other hand, that she wouldn't be able to make him leave if she so wished, so what was so hideous about having a makeshift bodyguard for a while? Unless he was somehow trying to make it so that she'd be carrying the can for him, whatever it was he had done…

"Hey, ey…" she said suddenly, recognising a house in the distance, "We're almost there, see… what was your name?"

Mugen looked at her, then again at the houses (they all looked the same to him…) and at her again.

"Mugen's the name, girly."

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**A/N: chapter three! Fate always throws these two together :)**


	4. Around her

**4 - Around her**

She was knocking at the door, and he was looking up at the sky. He'd tried to brush the thought under the carpet, but to no avail, his mind kept asking and asking, "_what on earth are you doing here?_"

When a middle-aged woman opened the door, a breeze coming from inside the house betrayed warm apple pie and tea (they both welcomed it). Her kind eyes first fell on Fuu, and she smiled at the girl, but as soon as she saw Mugen, she looked like she'd blow the whistle on him at any moment. But Fuu, noticing this, quickly told her that it was okay, that he was friends- at least for the time being.

And like this they were ushered into the house, ushered to a chair and to a nice portion of the apple pie they'd guessed before.

"So," Fuu said, between mouthfuls of the creamy dessert, "How's mom been doing, Shino?"

The woman's eyes were downcast for a second, but when her gaze met Fuu's it looked bright and honest, "She's fine, only sleeping now."

"Haha, it makes sense," the girl said, "It's logical since it's like, what, ten? Eleven?"

Right there and then, a clock struck twelve. Mugen chuckled to himself.

"Oh, look!" Fuu exclaimed, and placed the package with medicine on the table before Shino. A quizzical look appeared on her face, and she lifted an eyebrow at the girl, but said nothing.

"_Caught red-handed, huh?_" thought Mugen, as he helped himself to another slice of pie. Free food, good idea to follow her.

Sudden coughing from a room nearby interrupted whatever kind of moral issue about thievery may have been going on, and both Shino and Fuu sprang to their feet and rushed indoors, leaving a certain vagrant alone with a lot of delicious apple pie…

Hushed voices reached his ears, and he could guess what was going on, and somewhere deep in his conscience, a little voice told him that he should feel at least slightly bad about it.

Fuu swept into the room again like a hurricane, her features a knot of anxiety and worry and alarm. She rushed out of the front door, without saying anything, and he was left there, perplexed and slightly vexed, too. Shino came into the dining room shortly after.

"Oh, heavens," she whispered, her voice the perfect picture of dismay.

"What's with her?" Mugen asked.

"She's gone to the doctor's I'm afraid," the woman explained, "but that's far from here, I wish she wouldn't be so careless."

On the spur of the moment, Mugen stood up and ran after her. There was something odd going on with him, since when did he leave unfinished apple pies to run after boyish emo teens?

Whatever. He soon caught up with her.

"Hello again," he told her dully.

"What are you doing here?" she snapped at him, which took him by surprise. Soon she stopped running to catch her breath, and they walked side by side, silent for some time.

"I don't know," he confessed at last, "Annoying you?"

She muttered something that sounded pretty much like, _just what I needed_.

"C'me on girly…"

But she cut him in mid-sentence, "What are you doing still here, anyway? Don't you have a life or something?"

"Yes, and it's fucking wonderful," he replied, with a wolfish sneer that would've scared her if she hadn't been so preocuppied.

They rattled at each other for a while, from where Fuu learnt that he was trying to get away with murder (and smuggling and piracy and a list of other vile deeds) by keeping a low profile for a while. It became apparent that he wasn't the best kind of gentleman out there, breaking the law in broad daylight and everything. But, it was just her luck, c'est la vie and stuff.

When they finally came to the doctor's residence, it surprised Fuu how little she had to wait to find the man standing on the doorsill, prompt to go. He was quite an amazing doctor, actually- always ready, whichever time of day (or night) it was. He wasn't too old either (no, she was absolutely positive he wasn't forty yet), and perhaps that's why he was always so well-disposed, but he wasn't too lively either… a rather stoic character.

Just like Shino had done, the doctor eyed Mugen critically through his impeccable glasses. Mugen shot him back a rather arrogant glare, and tension built up around Fuu, though she couldn't possible explain _how_ that had come to happen.

"Uh, Mugen, this is doctor Jin," she intoduced, her voice coming out surprisingly small and meek. Their mutual reaction came completely off guard to her, but puff, see if she cared.

"It's my mother, doctor, she's not well, again…"

Surly, Mugen trailed after Fuu and Jin as they made their way back to Shino's house. He kicked a pebble as he walked, still perplexed at himself for having lived by the book for such a long period of time. Well, he'd had his fair share of uncommon events that day, maybe that could explain it- saving the kid, then running away with the kid and hiding with the kid in some dark room without attempting anything disreputable despite her not-unpleasant features… following the kid to some house where they gave him apple pie, what the fuck, and then following the kid yet again to some smartass' doctor's house and FOLLOWING THE KID STILL ONCE MORE to the apple pie house, yes that must be it, he must be completely losing it this time, point of no return.

He thought up a long, deliberately obscene mental curse.

Something that Fuu said out loud got Mugen out of his reverie, and as the real world fell into its very welcome place once more, he immediately noticed something in the atmosphere that smelled quite fishy to him. Not only to him, apparently, because dr. Foureyes was squinting his eyes towards somewhere to their left, where the street was shrouded in darkness due to a wrecked streetlight.

They weren't made to wait too long, because out of an alleyway crept a couple of sinister-looking characters. Mugen recognized them not because of their appearance but because of the clothes they wore- those were henchmen of Mukuro's just as certainly as he was _not_. What he was not so sure of, was whether they'd recognized _him_. But if they hadn't he wasn't about to kindly show them.

He and Jin exchanged a quick glance, and he was pleased to see how well the doctor had understood him- the man grabbed Fuu's wrist, who might as well get used to being flagged about (she'd been quivering slightly upto then, shifting her uncomfortable eyes from Jin to Mugen, from Mugen to Jin), and off they went, a neat cut-and-run as if they'd planned it beforehand.

Mugen was quick to knock the two guys out and teach them a lesson about assaulting people at random. Though they both had had guns with them, he knew how these people liked to procede during an attack, so it meant virtually no difference to him if they had them or they didn't.

He calmly jogged towards Fuu and Jin, only to see from afar that they'd gotten into a situation vaguely similar to the one they'd just escaped- two people, two guns.

As he drew closer, though, he saw with mild surprise how Jin got into some weird karate kamai, and, one blow, two, three blows later lay one of those assailants on the ground, KO'd. And there he was, turning to do the same with the second guy, when voila! Both Jin and Mugen, who was now close enough to be able to lend a hand if needed, had to look on, mouth agape, at how Fuu hit this guy repeatedly with some chunk of wood she'd found lying about.

"They weren't much of a threat, if she can do that so easily," Jin commented, and Mugen could only nod and feel dumbfounded.

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**A/N: chapter four! Go Mugen and doctor!Jin!**


	5. Away from it all

**5 - Away from it all**

Jin and Shino were in the room with Fuu's mother. Miraculously, there was still some of that heavenly apple pie left, and Mugen was more than happy to oblige. He had a lot to think over that pie, really. Things kept getting weirder and weirder for him, he felt that he'd somehow been transplanted into a life that wasn't his own. He'd played good guy that day more times than he had in his entire lifespan!

He eyed Fuu out of the corner of his eye. She had a vacant look, sprawled on the table as she was, seemingly trying to get to grips with her mother's sudden worsening. The silence in that small dining room was becoming overwhelming. Mugen wished he could be at least overhearing some of the conversation taking place in the other room, probably doctor fishface was speaking nonesense to this other woman, trying to convince her that girly's mother would make the grade, that she'd get better soon.

He finally stood up, and went out of the front door, to force some fresh air into his brain cells, and to escape that oppressive silence. He craved for a cigar, but oh, well, one sadly can't have everything. At least he'd eaten…! He knew he meant to lie low until this sort of mob of Mukuro's thought he no longer walked this Earth (or something) But it was becoming out of his depth, why he hadn't left yet, before he became too involved. He'd thought some times, when he'd been entagled in really bloody businesses, that when he was through with that, he could perhaps take some long vacations in an island of the Caribbean, far from all that which is remotely civilized- somewhere he could sleep long siestas, and look at the stars at night. He looked up at that moment, and all he saw was the profound blue sky tainted by that reddish hue the city lights gave off. He hated that.

He mused on this project of his, of running away. He didn't have a good head for figures, obviously, but he mused it couldn't be hard to put together the money he needed for a ride to Antigua or Barbuda, Guadeloupe or St Martin or whichever of those minor Antillas. What he hadn't a clue about, was where one was supposed to buy a ticket for the passage there (it was obvious that wherever he went it would be no goddamn plane that'd take him).

What brought him back to the real world was no other than Fuu- suddenly he wasn't looking at a sky full of stars anymore, nor was he lying on a deserted, tropical beach. He was back in the suburbs of that stupid city, where the sky was red, and the girl's mother was agonizing scarce meters from him. A pulse of anger made him bestow a glare on her that she didn't deserve.

Fuu fidgeted uneasily, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. There were goosebumps on her arms.

"Jin and Shino won't come out," she said finally, sounding so childlike and anxious and frail that Mugen's scowl melted into a straight face. He looked down to the tiled floor, and saw how her tiny pink converse wouldn't stay still.

"They're probably makin' out or somethin'," he said nonchalantly, and pretending that would make her feel at ease. She just gave him a stare that meant something like, _what the heck, that's sick, are you slow on the uptake or something?_

His eyes lit up with mischievousness. "I'd go get your mum outta there soon' as possible…"

Her cheeks flushed deeply in indignation.

"You're a disgusting jerk," she spat at him, "What are you doing still here, anyway?"

He snickered slighly. "I'm gettin' on top of annoyin' ya of course, and why, it's true about fishface and the lassy, they were there lookin' at eachother like they were candy or somethin'."

Fuu couldn't believe her ears. The fact that he'd saved her that very afternoon long forgotten, she retorted, "Ugh, you're a disrespectful bastard! You should just get your scrawny ass going to wherever hellhole you came from and leave us alone, won't you?" And she went on calling him names and telling him to butt off, until Mugen realized that the girl could apparently talk the hind legs off a donkey if properly handled (which was a real pain in the ass), and he got bored. He'd meant to have some fun taunting her, but hearing her drone about his being unwanted was irritating him beyond amusement. And what was worse, she kept uttering incoherences (_gift of the gab, where are you when needed?_ He wondered)…

The best he could think of to make her stop talking was to put his hand of long, boney fingers over her mouth. She shut up immediately and looked up at him, utter confusion dancing in her eyes.

Jin chose that very moment to make his appearance, and Mugen noticed how his "I'm head and shoulders above the word" air was gone, and now he was only one more of the three of them, looking just as tired and just as stray.

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**A/N: chapter five! Yay for Jin x Shino! What's gonna happen to Fuu's mom?**


	6. By the kerbside

**6 - By the kerbside**

Mugen didn't know what on _Earth_ it was he was doing there. Again. For the last few weeks he'd circled the place, like a vulture, and not once had he known exactly what had brought him there in the first place. It was as if something instinctive drew him to the plain house, to the lame grassy entrance.

Every time he made sure no one saw him. Sometimes he found himself in that neighbourhood at unlikely hours of the night, sometimes during peaceful siesta midnoon.

Fuu'd never seen him, he'd seen her exiting the place only once, and she'd borne ugly dark bags under her eyes.

Today, today however, he saw her again, sitting miserably on the kerbside, her face buried in her arms resting on her knees. His lower lip twitched downwards, as it always did when he saw something he didn't like. The sun was shining happily on the sky, it was no later than three in the afternoon, and Fuu looking so gloomy there was just unmatching.

Unthinkingly, he approached her, and before he had time to feel shocked at himself she'd heard him and looked his way.

She had an alert expression on her face, but upon seeing him her brow relaxed and her eyes softened only slightly.

"You!" she said slowly, and he sat unceremoniously by her side. She recalled him to be just as shaggy and unkempt. His stare retained the same wilderness about it that made it so peculiar of his. Then she wondered how on lovely planet Earth it was that she remembered so much about him.

"Glad t'see ya too, girlie. So, what's up?"

Odd to have him ask that, she thought, since he'd practically appeared from nowhere. She hadn't honestly ever expected to see him again. One cloud floated past the sun, blocking it for some minutes, and she shivered barely.

"Mum passed away last night," she said simply, entwining her fingers.

Mugen had never been certain of how he'd felt that couple of days he'd spent with the girl, her mother and the fishfaced doctor, but he felt there was something wrong about taking that piece of news just lying down. In the end Jin's claims of the woman getting any better had just been full of hot air.

However, he stayed silent.

"She was sleeping," Fuu said smally, and then fell silent for a while.

"Shino'd agreed to let us stay till mum got better, but it's been two months since we last paid her any rent," she went on, "So I don't know what I'll be doing now… I can't stay with her, abusing her hospitality forever… "

Mugen was saved from having to think something to say by Shino's going out of the house.

"Oh, you're back," she said with mild surprise when she recognized Mugen, who wasn't looking less a criminal than when she had met him the first time.

"Sorta," he muttered, scratching the back of his head.

"Wouldn't have thought we'd see you again," she commented with this tiny upcurving of her lips he couldn't decipher (neither could Fuu, who was sitting on the kerbside looking faded, like a pricked baloon). Indeed, he'd just left without saying goodbye or anything, he didn't know how to say goodbye anyway… He'd not wanted to become too involved, like he'd thousandfold repeated to himself, but maybe he'd been slightly late…

.

.

Shino was determined not to let her friend's daughter leave just like that, but Fuu dug her heels in over her decision. She wasn't going to be a nuisance to her any longer, and that was her final word, however painful to both of them.

Mugen sat on the kerbside, keeping as deliberately silent as he could, as if a sea of ice separated him from Jin, who had dropped by on Shino to find the strange conjunction of vagrant and touchy farewell. It did the trick, because the man didn't even attempt any conversation.

Suddenly the atmosphere changed and everything became oddly still. Both women had stopped talking, and Shino went back into the house, and Jin followed her wordlessly (and Mugen knew something had gone on between them those weeks he'd disappeared from their lives).

Fuu's face was still a bit turbulent from the strong emotions, but let through that she was sticking to her guns, that she'd be leaving as soon as possible.

"She wouldn't have me leaving, but I'm gonna pack my stuff when they come out," she explained to Mugen, who didn't really care much about the girl's issues, and was just sitting on the fence with no emotion whatsoever, maybe just some curiosity to see how Fuu would fare on her own. But that was it. He shrunk his shoulders.

"Just don't try a-stealin' for a livin' 'cause you won't get too far, y'know," he commented, resting his chin on the palm of his hand, looking at her through half-bored, half-sleepy lids.

She crooked up a smile.

.

.

She took one last longing look at Shino's house, the woman stood on the threshold in Jin's arms, tears welling up in her eyes. Her jam-packed knapsack felt edgy against her back, and, added to the lump in her throat, made her feel like a terrible person. As if she'd voted with her feet rather than try to talk it over. But she'd done her best, and there was no turning back, she couldn't leech off Shino for the rest of her life. It would have been different perhaps if the older woman had allowed her to help with the expenditures of the house, but Shino wouldn't take a coin of Fuu's meagre income. And that couldn't do.

.

Deep in her musings, in her bitterness for leaving and the pain still underlying her mother's passing away, she eventually came to realize she'd gotten helplessly lost. She cursed herself, and tried to focus in being strong and letting those feelings pass through her, but she couldn't do it, and the grey buildings around her stood menacing, as impassive judges made of concrete. Their walls were heavy with graffity, streaked with coffee colored marks left by long-running leaks from rusty pipelines.

Fuu turned round to retrace her steps, but there was then this sudden change in the air, in the atmosphere, she didn't hear any breathing but she could bet her clothes that there _was_ someone breathing somewhere there. Cursing her luck again, and wishing that Mugen hadn't disappeared once more earlier that day, she calmly kept going back from where she'd come, in hopes of finding a main street, or at least a crowd to mingle with.

She had no such luck, of course.

She wasn't feeling like going up in arms against them, but when the three delinquents propped her against one of those smelly tarmac-ish walls, one holding a knife to ther throat, she just _had_ to scream. But it was a reflex, a high pitched reflex she couldn't help. Methodically they searched her pockets, ignoring her whimpering, and would've gotten further undoubtedly if something hadn't taken place that would change the events dramatically.

Fuu didn't hear anything because her hearing had probably gone numb, but the three thugs evidently responded to somebody's call, because their head spun and they soon forgot her, and she crumbled to the ground like discarded origami.

She watched on, oblivious to the fact that *_that_* was her chance to run away unharmed. But hey, wait a moment, she _knew_ who that guy was! The guy standing on the middle of the street, she meant, that looked her way as if to say, '_Oh, please, can't leave you alone half a sec,_' and merrily proceeded to give the three souls the beating of their lives with the _hilt_ of what looked like a… sword. The haft had a trident-like decoration that made it look quite distinctive. She distantly noticed that Mugen seemed to greatly enjoy taking the law into his own two hands.

Soon the three lay on the cracked pavement, and her threefold saviour walked up to her, casually, with a ghost smirk tugging at his handsome lips.

"Heya girlie, ya got some food on ya?" he asked, and Fuu immediately pouted, without even thinking about doing it.

She stood up and steadied herself against the wall, because though she'd not noticed it before, she'd been quivering all the while, in fear and weariness and anxiety.

For some moments she stayed there, looking at him without saying a word, her thoughts entangled inside her head as if they were a nest of snakes, she biting her lower lip in a way Mugen found odd.

And then she took a step forward and hugged him, and broke down, and started telling him all those incoherent thoughts her mind had been conjuring.

He just remained still and perplexed, totally taken aback.

Those things were beyond the power of his understanding, to put it some way.

It was that moment when Mugen realized he'd sealed his fate.

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**A/N: Ahhh, Mugen making clever observations :P And what's going to happen to them now that they're on their own... but together?**

**Whatever happens next, it'll prolly have to do with food, I can tell you.**

**(thanks for the review! Yes, you! You know who I'm talking to! =D)**


	7. In a predicament

**7 – In a predicament**

The grass roots of Mukuro's little dirty business were still on his track, that he knew as clearly as he knew that he was eating ice-cream that very moment. Right, ice-cream, sometimes life smiles on you.

There were a couple of issues that hadn't been raised so far, and where the heck they were going to spend the night was one of them. Mugen side-glanced at Fuu, who was sipping this very pink, unhealthy-looking milkshake of sorts, and scowled privately. What the heck. How had _this_ come to happen?

.

.

Her whining had cut no ice with him since the beginning. He was a tough guy who didn't give a care about her sensitive feet, or whatever, and if they didn't find somewhere to stay the night, well, it was all right with him for all he minded, he'd slept in alleyways at least half of his life.

She drone on and on, and, upon seeing her complaints falling on deaf ears, she complained even more strongly.

"Call it a day, willya kiddo?" Mugen said, irritated. "Damn I don't know why I'm still around ya…"

Fuu pouted, and Mugen realized he _hated_ that she did that, and she did it _all the time_, but behind closed doors he couldn't tell if it was because it was childish and annoying, or because it looked so innocent so… cute? Mental slap, and a hard one. Flat chested teenagers could be associated with no positive thought, final stop, and what the fuck. It was easier said than done, mind you, because the way her lower lip stuck out each time she couldn't think of a mean comeback to his sharp words made him want to whack her and at the same time, offend her again so that she'd do that _again_. He was going insane, he concluded. Downright insane.

And judging by Fuu's present look, she thought something along the lines as well.

He scowled at her.

.

.

Fuu'd wrinkled her nose at the sight of the barred windows and run-down roofing tiles, but had come to accept his decision for lack of a better idea. It was going to be only one night, anyway, just one. She hoped. After a long lasting struggle between her sense of decency, her pride, morals and weariness and self-consciouness, she crossed the threshold, also ushered by a look of blatant annoyance coming from Mugen's side.

"Not time to be all princess-y," he commented as she made a face of disgust when a rat fled by.

"But… ew!" she retorted, casting him a glance of, _you do sleep in places like this don't you_. But stayed silent as he showed her the place by means of a lighter (no, he hadn't been to that abandoned house either, they'd come across it by chance as they wandered roofless.)

They searched the whole place until they decided on staying in one of the rooms, that looked like it had belonged to children once. It was grotty and dusty, but it could have been definitely worse. Still, Fuu cursed the law of the jungle inwardly. It was so unfair that some people had so much money they owned at least three houses in different touristic points, and she had to spend her life from that point onwards taking pitiful shelter in old shacks like that one.

.

.

She was beyond thankful that she was not alone. Because, although Mugen the contemptuous roamer was just about the worst kind of company possible, well, deep down there he wasn't so _bad_. He'd saved her _life_, for goodness' sake!

He was lying on his side, his back to her. She was sort of hungry too, and at that point her thoughts made little sense. But she was surprised to find that she could tell chapter and verse of each time he'd happened to rescue her from something, and that was odd, at least to her mind.

He was clearly snoring now, however far from him she'd placed herself, and she scowled. It was going to be a long night, she felt. After a while she finally fell asleep, thinking about how silly it was to sit in judgement about a man she knew nothing about, and when I say nothing, I mean, _nothing_.

* * *

**A/N: ****Aha! Now they're breaking into abandoned houses :P Trust Mugen to trespass?**

**( Sorry for the shortness. )**

**Next chapter: _Our characters fight over food, and Mukuro's thugs join the party._**

_**Thanks so much to Hana-Liatris, dbzgtfan2004 and Luv4Uncas for the reviews!**_


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